Ryan Reynolds as Matt Weston, a young CIA agent whose primary responsibility is to watch over a Safe House in Cape Town and make sure his guests have everything they need. After 12 months pass with no guests, Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a man wanted on four continents, is captured and brought in for interrogation. When the safe house is breached by heavily armed intruders, Weston escapes with Tobin and has to “protect” both Tobin and himself if he wants to live and secure a new position as a field operative.
First and foremost, Safe House is an action movie and director Daniel Espinosa doesn’t hold back at all in his English language debut. He starts the movie off with Denzel showing off his deadly talents as a former field operative and then moves into a well constructed chase scene that perfectly sets up Tobin’s side of the film. As Safe House continues, we are treated to one awesome chase scene upon another that include lots of flying bullets. One particularly gripping scene is when Weston locks Tobin in his trunk and tries to evade the armed assailants that are hot on his tail. It’s one scene that’ll knock your socks off and set the pace for the rest of the film.
To some this may feel like a bland film (though I don’t know how), but no matter how generic the genre might get, enemy of the state films always seem to resonate well with me. It’s probably due to the badass nature of the main character or, in this case, characters. Having Denzel in this movie was enough to get me into the theater but, shockingly, Ryan Reynolds was able to hold his own against the powerful presence of Mr. Washington.
This brings me to the performances. Denzel’s performance was intimidating and downright cool. He’s a pro and at this point in his career he can do no wrong when playing a badass character. In fact, Tobin Frost is a mix between Detective Alonzo Harris from Training Day and Creasy from Man on Fire, and all of them are guys you’d never want to mess with. As for 
Ryan Reynolds, you can visually see that he is growing as an actor and I thought this performance was much better than his last couple of films like Green Lantern and The Change-Up. The movie also stars the calm and collected Brendan Gleeson (The Guard), the talented Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air) and the versatile Sam Shepard (Blackthorn) all of whom do a decent job of making this action film move at its appropriate pace.
The main downside to the film is that if you’re semi good at reading faces you can easily figure out the twist in the film. The movie is almost two hours long but for those intuitive enough you’ll be able to figure out the ending 30 minutes into the feature. Luckily for us, there are enough loud noises and chase scenes to distract us until the “big” reveal comes with 15 minutes left in the feature. Though it doesn’t ruin the movie for me, the other downside is that the film feels generic when all is said and done, even if I did walk out completely satisfied.
Safe House is by no means original but it shouldn’t really disappoint you. If you’re as big of a Denzel Washington fan as I am then you are absolutely going to love this film. Despite its predictability and iffy ending, it’s definitely one of the better actions films to have been released thus far in 2012 and one that I’d suggest checking out. With plenty of chase sequences, Denzel badassery, and and fun rated R action, Safe House is your best bet for this weekend’s cinematic entertainment.
Rating: If you focus on Denzel you’ll have one helluva a good time (6.8/10)
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